


touches

by fugues



Series: zexal au meme [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-26 01:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugues/pseuds/fugues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tron touches their dæmons. Tron touches their dæmons and his dæmon - the ever-shifting thing that never once touches the proud leopard she’d been before - touches them, runs skittering across their shoes on too many legs or climbs up their clothes to sit upon their shoulders where none of their own dæmons can now, sits in their pockets as something small and furred and innocent-looking to see where Tron can’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	touches

**Author's Note:**

> for the zexal au meme. #3, dæmon au. byron's dæmon (nacolettia) was a leopard, v's (endysinea) is a pallas cat, iv's (marlianess) is a serval and iii's (mersadea) is a turkish van.

Tron touches their dæmons. Tron touches their dæmons and  _his_ dæmon - the ever-shifting thing that never once touches the proud leopard she’d been before - touches  _them_ , runs skittering across their shoes on too many legs or climbs up their clothes to sit upon their shoulders where none of their own dæmons can now, sits in their pockets as something small and furred and innocent-looking to see where Tron can’t.

It’s sickening. To see, to feel, and it doesn’t matter which of them is on the receiving end of it because that’s always the case regardless. Oh, they have their different reactions to it, and depending too on which touch it is. 

III simpers and smiles when Tron touches Mersadea, and - IV wonders - maybe he even enjoys that. But the cat dæmon herself flinches and hisses and lashes out at Tron, and III cringes away too when Nacolettia goes running across him, so it’s not as though it really matters. III might enjoy the feel of a hand on his dæmon - and, yeah, it’s  _supposed_ to be enjoyable, they all know that, but then again it’s also supposed to be the touch of a lover rather than the insane child that used to be their father - but it’s not like he can really  _truly_ enjoy it when his dæmon cringes from it, when he cringes away from Nacolettia. 

V closes himself off, flinches and then goes cold like ice when Tron’s fingers dip into Endysinea’s long fur. And IV has seen them, sometimes, the way V will pick Endysinea up after Tron is gone and run his own long fingers through her fur as she quivers against him, the way she’ll crawl up close and run her little rasping tongue over V’s cheek when he’s had to suffer Nacolettia’s touch.

IV, though, he’s lucky. Because Nacolettia won’t touch him, shies far enough away from him when Tron pases that the gap between him and her would be painful for anyone normal - though, of course, Tron  _isn’t_ , Tron can go as far as he likes from Nacolettia and neither of them seems to care in the slightest. When the time comes that Tron needs to see what IV sees, Nacolettia won’t huddle in his pocket like she does with V and III, won’t consent to do more than attach herself to Marlianess as some small, many-legged thing that runs through his fur and makes him complain to IV of the itch, or something with sharp claws that she digs in to hang on so that Marlia cringes from the pain.

All that IV can do is apologise, and they both know it, so Marlia limits his complaining to afterwards, when Nacolettia is gone and can’t make his suffering worse.

So IV is lucky, where Nacolettia is concerned. Less lucky where Tron is concerned, because Marlia’s forced to suffer more touches than either of the other two put together.

He wonders, sometimes, whether it’s because of the spots. Whether Marlia’s fingerpaint spots remind Tron of the rosettes that Nacolettia used to have, whether there’s something of their father still in there that misses the way she used to be. He wonders, too, whether Tron misses it in general, having a settled dæmon. What it must be like, to go from the huge leopard dæmon he remembers from his childhood to the ever-shifting thing Tron has, the thing that’s never bigger than a housecat, on the rare occasions that she even  _is_ a cat now.

“I wonder if she’ll settle again,” he murmurs to Marlia one night as he’s falling asleep, “If she’ll be a leopard again, or a cat at all.”

“I think she’ll be a spider, or a snake,” Marlia answers. “Something poisonous, like him.”

He ought to be offended. Ought to scold Marlia for talking about his father like that. Except that he can always remember the sharp, shivering discomfort of Tron’s fingers in Marlia’s fur that never seems to fade even when Tron’s nowhere near them, and so instead he sighs.

“Yeah,” he says softly, and wishes it weren’t so true.


End file.
